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Confronting the Full Foreign Policy Implications of Climate Change

How could the battle against climate change drive a fundamental shift in American foreign policy?
The only way to successfully combat climate change will be through an unprecedented level of global cooperation. Almost any successful scenario will require a new level of leadership from the United States and the developed world. How might that coordination force a rework of America’s foreign policy?

The inexorable advance of climate change that’s already in motion also will spawn new global challenges, from mass migrations to wars over scarce resources like water. These secondary effects will also hold serious foreign policy implications for the United States. How can the United States develop proactive strategies for dealing with the foreign policy repercussions of climate change? Will facing these new global challenges force America to be more collaborative in other ways in how we relate to other nations? Will climate change provide not just a challenge but an opportunity?

Given how committed elites of the military industrial congressional complex are to current U.S. foreign policy – and given the current realities in campaign finance that make stepping out of line nearly impossible for most ambitious politicians – what do you believe is the most genuinely effective strategy climate activists can employ to advance American foreign policy reinvention?